


Leaving On A Jet Plane

by decadent_mousse



Series: We Don't Skip A Beat [10]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, Heartbeat Kink, Heartbeats, Hermann cries, I felt like that needed a warning, M/M, Post-Canon, i promise this is not a sad fic, wow look at that Hermann's not the only math wizard over here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 02:18:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14990615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: A lot can change over the course of ten years, but some things stay the same.





	Leaving On A Jet Plane

**Author's Note:**

> Me?? Writing more heart-related stuff?? Shocking.

Newton was set to speak at several universities about the finer points of kaiju biology and what the possible applications of his knowledge might be now that the war was over. Hermann had originally planned on coming along, but he had a couple lectures on jaeger tech to attend himself and the schedules conflicted.  He had known from the start that this sort of thing was likely to happen, now. They were each of them the top experts in their field, after all. 

It didn't make it any easier.    
  
Newt, for his part, didn't look any happier about the situation than he did, even if he was trying to keep up a brave face.   
  
They were standing together awkwardly in the airport, now.  In a few minutes, Newton would get on a plane and that would be the last Hermann would see of him for an entire two months. That was one-sixth of a whole year.  

He knew full well that he was being ridiculous about this, but they’d been married for all of a month and this wasn’t exactly the extended honeymoon either of them had originally planned for.  He tried his best not to let his disappointment show, however. They were both grown men, with their own separate careers, and the last thing he wanted was Newton to feel guilty for going on what was a perfectly reasonable business trip.  The man was just irresponsible enough that he was liable to cancel the whole thing altogether if he thought Hermann would pine too terribly for him while he was gone -- which, to be clear: he absolutely would  _ not _ \-- and Hermann didn’t want that.  He could handle this maturely.

He had a suspicion that Newt saw right through him, though, as he so often did either by way of having worked with him for years or their sharing of minds.  It was hard to determine which it was, these days.

“So,” Newt started, “I got you a going away present.”

“Isn’t that typically the sort of thing given to the person who’s doing the going?”

He snorted.  “What, are there rules?  I’m the person going away, I’m doing the giving.  That still makes it a going away present, dude.”

Newton bent over to root around in one of his bags for several minutes and Hermann was just short of telling him to forget about it, that he was going to miss his flight, that he could give him whatever it was some other time, when Newton finally brandished some sort of fuzzy… thing.  It wasn’t until he was done wrestling around with both it and the bag, and had thrust it into Hermann’s hands, that Hermann was able to focus on it long enough to recognize it for what it was.

“Not the most tasteful of gifts,” he sniffed, turning the kaiju over in his hands.  It was undeniably soft to the touch, which clashed with its horrific appearance.

“Hey, I put my heart into that,” Newt said with a grin, chuckling to himself.  When Hermann only stared at him, he added, “I mean, I literally recorded my heart and stuck it in there.  That way you’ll always have a piece of me with you even when I’m not around!”

Hermann opened his mouth, unsure of what to say.  He realized, as Newton started to turn a bit red, that he’d been gaping at him for longer than was polite.

“I know it’s cheesy,” Newt continued, “but I just-- felt like doing it.”

“It’s not.”  Hermann cleared his throat.  “Well, it is, but… a level of cheesiness I can accept.  Thank you, Newton.”

Newt’s grin, if possible, got brighter.  “Oh, well, you’re welcome.” He stood on the tips of his toes, leaned in, and was wrapping Hermann in a hug and kissing him on the cheek before he could protest.  “I know, I know, public displays, blah, blah, blah. But I love you and I’m not gonna see you for like  _ months _ , so just humor me, okay?”

Hermann’s heart did a small flip in his chest and he adjusted his grip on both his cane and the kaiju so he could clumsily return Newton’s embrace, turning his face to catch Newt’s mouth in his.  Newton let out a surprised but pleased noise and pressed in closer, nuzzling Hermann’s face. They probably made quite the picture. People were undoubtedly going to stare. He found himself not minding as much as he usually might.

“I love you, too.”

“Wow, you must,” Newt breathed, a giddy look in his eyes as he pulled away.  “I thought you had rules against making out in public?”

“For you, just this once, I’m willing to bend them.”

“It’s only two months,” Newton said softly, and Hermann wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to convince.  “It’s not like we’re never going to see each other again.”

“I know,” Hermann replied, but he still hadn’t let go of Newt and Newt wasn’t letting go of him, either.  

“Well,” Newt said, a glimmer of something troublingly mischievous in his eyes.  “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go. I’m standing here--”

“Do not,” Hermann warned.

He started laughing.  “You’re no fun.”

~

As much as Hermann had missed Newt during what had ended up being three, not two, months, it paled in comparison to the span of the years that later followed.  He’d never been able to bring himself to get rid of that plush kaiju. He hadn’t even packed it up right away. It stayed on their -- his -- bed until one day, about three or four years in, when the recording abruptly stopped working and Hermann was left with the choice of gutting the thing in an attempt to fix it or finally putting it in storage with the rest of what Newton had left behind.  He’d chosen the latter, and it felt a bit like a door finally shutting.

Truthfully, he didn’t think about it much at all, after that.  He missed the company of it, perhaps. Maybe, on some level, there’d always be that missing thing he’d stashed inside his closet, but he was able to move on, focus on other things.  It helped that there was no shortage of work to be done on the jaegers, which continued to be made, war or no war. He didn’t always approve of their uses, but God help him, at least it kept his thoughts occupied by something other than his failed marriage.

~

He wasn’t expecting to inexplicably find the plushie sitting on his -- their -- bed one day when he came back to his quarters after a particularly long day at the lab.  There it was, nonetheless, looking no different than it had the day Hermann had stashed it away. His breath caught in his throat and it was a foolish reaction, really, to have to what was essentially a glorified pillow, but it was the reaction he had, all the same.

Newt was nowhere to be seen, so Hermann couldn’t ask him things like “how” or “why.”  Maybe he’d been moving more of his things in and had found it where it had been lying in its box for the better part of six years and had felt nostalgic about it.  It had caught him off-guard, but Hermann had no objections. It felt like a bit like a sign that Newt was finally beginning to settle in, to feel comfortable with their shared life again.  Hermann did wonder if he’d realized it was broken, though.

Except when he sat on the bed and gave the plushie an absent-minded squeeze, he was startled to feel a soft, familiar thrum in his hands.  It  _ had _ been broken -- he knew because he’d tried it again, several times, just on the off chance it was some sort of malfunction -- but it was undeniably working now.  He spared a self-conscious glance at the door before lifting the plush kaiju up to his ear. It sounded a bit different than it had before. He was certain it had to have been a different recording, but it was still undeniably Newton.

He stood, frowning down at the kaiju thoughtfully.  Before he had time to contemplate the hows and whys of the situation, the door opened with a groan and Newton walked in.  His face lit up when he realized Hermann was there.

“Oh, hey!”

Hermann cleared his throat and tried his best to act casual, despite the thoughts whirling around in his mind.  “Hello.”

“Been back long?”

“Ah, no.”

“I was going to run by the lab and ask you out to lunch,” Newt grinned, “but since you’re  _ here _ ...”  He noticed the plushie in Hermann’s hands and blinked.  “Oh hey, you found it.”

“I did.”

“Did you try it out?”

Hermann’s mouth twitched.  “Yes, I did.” He wanted to say more, so much more, but it was hard to speak past the tightness in his throat.  “When did you…”

“This morning.  I found it a few days ago, but I hadn’t a chance to tinker with it yet.  I wasn’t surprised the speaker had quit working, those aren’t as long-lasting as the real thing.  So I-- well, I bought a new one, made a new recording, and did a little surgery.”

“You…”  He trailed off, at a loss for words.

“Anyway,” Newt continued, “our bodies replace all -- well, not all, but most -- of our cells every… seven, eight, ten years, so you’d probably be about due for an update anyway, so I figured--  I should’ve asked you first, maybe, before I just--”

“It’s alright,” Hermann said softly, running his fingers across the thin seam left behind by Newton’s operation.  It was so faint, he might not have noticed it at all if he hadn’t known to look for it.

“Seeing it brought back a lot of memories,” Newt said.  “It’s hard to believe how long ago that was.”

Nine years ago, and about half a year after they’d gotten married.  In another half a year, Newt had been gone. One year -- less than that, if he counted the times in between that they’d spent on opposite sides of the world for some reason or another -- that was all they’d had.  

“Hermann…”  

He hadn’t realized he’d started crying until he saw the stricken look on Newt’s face.  Well, this was embarrassing. Newt walked over to him and gently plucked the kaiju out of his grasp and tossed it on the bed, kneeling in front of him and taking Hermann’s hands in his.

“Be careful with that,” Hermann warned wetly.  “It’s very dear to me.”

“Well, worse comes to worse,” Newt said, taking Herman’s hand and holding it to his chest, “you’ve got the real deal right here and it’s not going anywhere ever again.”

Hermann looked at him.  “You can’t promise something like that.”

“I can and I am.  Pretty sure there was something about that in our marriage vows.  I mean, I wouldn’t swear to it because I’m pretty sure Tendo spiked the punch that night, but--”

“Don’t.” 

Newt’s expression softened.  “Sorry.”

Hermann could count the number of times in the span of their relationship that Newton had apologized to him on one hand.  It wasn’t always for lack of feeling contrite -- it was just hard for him, sometimes, to say. Hermann appreciated it now, though he wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for this particular situation or for something else entirely.

They were so close, he could feel the heat radiating from Newton’s body.  He wanted, suddenly, very much to hug him. To kiss him. To tell him that he didn’t need to apologize, for any of it.  That it wasn’t his fault. Even now, he knew Newt blamed himself and it tore at him. The idea that Newt was suffering all the guilt of actions that weren’t even his and that there was nothing he could do to help him.

Newt leaned in and laid his forehead on Hermann’s shoulder.  “I just wanted to give something back to you, you know?”

“You have and you weren’t wrong.”  Newt looked up at him, raising an eyebrow.  “The genuine article is more satisfying.” 

Newt grinned and kissed him.  He reached up to brush his fingers across Hermann’s cheek.  

“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“They aren’t sad tears, Newton.  I kept that thing close for a long time, you know.  Hideous though it is.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”  

Hermann wrapped his arms around him, and they sat there like that for awhile, holding each other, leaning into each other.  Newt’s hand was still lying atop where Hermann’s was, pressed against the steady thump of Newt’s heartbeat. Hermann turned his hand to grab it and brought it to his own chest.  Newt made a soft noise.

“They made me delete all your recordings.  All the ones you sent me, over the years? I-- I don’t remember doing it.  One day the files were there and the next they just… weren’t.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Uh, because they’re assholes?  Because as long as I had them I felt like maybe I-- maybe I still had  _ something _ .”

“You do,” Hermann murmured, pressing his face into Newt’s hair.  “You still have me, Newton.”

“Yeah,” he said softly.  “I know.”

“Besides, what was that you said about our cells replacing themselves?  You’re due for new recordings, anyway.”

Newt pulled back, just a little, to look at him.  “Not to sound clingy, but the next time I go on some job thing -- I mean, if anyone actually ever gives me a job again -- you’re coming with me.  That sounded clingy.”

“It didn’t,” Hermann said.  “Or it did, but… after everything that’s happened, I can’t say I particularly like the idea of parting ways for very long, either.”

“So, kinda related-- we never technically got divorced,” Newt said, licking his lips nervously.  “Which I know doesn’t mean a whole lot when I was gone for… a decade… but--”

“Newton.”

“We never really got our honeymoon,” he continued.  “So what do you think about a couple months vacation at the… beach country?”

Hermann squinted at him.  “The beach country?”

Newt shrugged helplessly.  “Dude, I’ve never been on a honeymoon before.  I don’t know where people go. Someplace nice. It could be a beach.  It could be in a country.”

“And two months?”  Hermann scoffed, aiming for chastising and not quite managing it.  “Isn’t that a bit long for a honeymoon?”

“Maybe, but I kinda think we’ve earned it, don’t you?”

Hermann smiled warmly.  “I do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Never sticking to one hard and fast timeline/set of headcanons is both a blessing and a curse because somewhere in the middle of writing this my brain, terrible gremlin that it is, said, "Okay, Newt and Hermann being engaged and Newt leaving before the wedding is bad, but consider: Newt and Hermann getting married and Newt leaving AFTER that," and now here we are.
> 
> Title comes from the song of the same name, which originally I just used as a brief jokey thing in the fic but then listened to the song and the lyrics and became genuinely emotional about it because it feels very on-point.
> 
> Thanks to [AJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zach_stone) for letting me bounce this fic off of them from time to time and also for confirming for me that honeymoons are some strange mythical thing that nobody apparently actually does at some form of "beach country."


End file.
